To utter words indistinctly or unintelligibly; to utter inarticulate sounds; as a child babbles.

2.

To talk incoherently; to utter unmeaning words.

3.

To talk much; to chatter; to prate.

4.

To make a continuous murmuring noise, as shallow water running over stones. "In every babbling brook he finds a friend." Note: Hounds are said to babble, or to be babbling, when they are too noisy after having found a good scent.

... his approval and repeating that he quite understood, to stop the old man's babble. Then he advised the architect to try and put his invention in practice; but he only shrugged his shoulders—it was years since he had left off trying anything. After all, what did it matter to him whether his system was applied or no? He ...— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France

... stopped, and Nana slid down from the straw, right into Lucia's waiting arms. She was so glad to see her, that she could only babble foolishly. All during her long journey, and her stay in strange villages, she had thought of nothing but Lucia in the hands of the enemy, and she was nearly crazy with relief and joy to find her ...— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent

... nearer to romance than a Turkish bath. It was once waste ground covered with horrible rubbish-heaps, and made dangerous by the imperfectly-protected shafts of disused coal-pits. Now you enter it by emblazoned gates; it is surrounded by elegant railings; fountains and cascades babble in it; wild-fowl from far countries roost in it, on trees with long names; tea is served in it; brass bands make music on its terraces, and on its highest terrace town councillors play bowls on billiard-table ...— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... half hour was a mad scramble. Afternoon frocks were changed for evening gowns. The younger girls were shooed from the room amid murmurs of protest, while a happy babble streamed on from the lips of the participants of the ...— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs

... Livingstone had all these qualities, coupled with the sublime indifference of the truly great to the mere side issues of life. You and I sit down to our comfortable meals, sleep in our well-appointed beds, read our Bibles with perfunctory boredom, and babble an occasional prayer for those who endure hardships—when we are reminded from the pulpit to do so. When we read of some awful calamity, such as has blazoned across the pages of history within the past few weeks, we shudder that men should lay down their lives in the barren wastes of ice. ...— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... and struck the metal paving outside, Randall heard a wild babble of cries from inside. A moment he and Lanier gazed frenziedly around them, then were running with great leaps along the base of the building from which they had ...— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... mountain-land, the sharp sting of life grew blunted and the wandering merged half into a dream. Smoke would become abruptly conscious, to find himself staring at the never-ending hated snow-peaks, his senseless babble still ringing in his ears. And the next he would know, after seeming centuries, was that again he was roused to the sound of his own maunderings. Labiskwee, too, was light-headed most of the time. In the main their efforts were ...— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... seemed toward the headwaters. The roar of the rapids they approached now came up-stream with a heavier note, and was distinguishable at much greater distances, and the boats in passing through some of the heavier rapids did so in the midst of a din quite different from the gentle babble of the shallow stream far toward its source. The boom of the bad water far below ...— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough

... said at last, resting her hand on that of her companion. Obediently the doctor stopped his horse. The park was still but for the bird notes, the laughter and babble of the brook far below, and the rustle of the fresh leaves, each one a transparency ...— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... a plan," exclaimed Nevill. "I don't think De Mora can have got home yet from the palace. I saw him having supper. Suppose I dart back, flutter gracefully round him, babble 'tile talk' a bit—he's a tile expert after my own heart—then casually ask what Arabs he's got staying with him. If Maieddine's in his house it can't be a secret—incidentally I may find out where the fellow comes ...— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... to say was, Certainly. Bullfinch (who is by nature of a hopeful constitution) then began to babble of green geese. But I checked him in that Falstaffian vein, urging considerations ...— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... Then a babble of inquiry and speculation broke out Where was the thing going? What was it doing? What did its sudden swift voyage mean? For the rest of the day the camp was less sleepy than usual. Men everywhere discussed the aeroplane. Dalton was not the only one who envied the members of the ...— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham

... Norah began to babble to Anna. "You know, I just thought I never would get this old thing on." She was speaking of her dress. "Aileen wouldn't help me—the ...— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... no doubt, gentlemen, that I want to amuse you. You are mistaken in that, too. I am by no means such a mirthful person as you imagine, or as you may imagine; however, irritated by all this babble (and I feel that you are irritated) you think fit to ask me who I am—then my answer is, I am a collegiate assessor. I was in the service that I might have something to eat (and solely for that reason), and ...— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... in finding things," I exclaimed, while he watched me, and the up stream too, whence a babble of water was approaching. "As sure as I ...— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... way with him, This stranger that so dogs us! Well or ill I may entreat him, he must babble still! ...— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... enthusiasm lavished by London on the operative class. Ten guineas per night—five hundred for the season—is the price exacted for a first-rate opera-box; and as the exclusives usually arrive at the close of the opera, or, if earlier, keep up a perpetual babble during its performance, they clearly come for the dancing.—"On voit l'opera, et l'on ecoute le ballet," used to be said of the Academie de Musique. But it might be asserted now, with fully as much truth, of the Queen's Theatre, where the evolutions of Carlotta Grisi, Elssler, and ...— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... it; and far from exhibiting surprise at his ignoring silence she appeared to receive it as a natural thing. If any word at all were uttered by the little group, it was an occasional whisper of the woman to the child—a tiny girl in short clothes and blue boots of knitted yarn—and the murmured babble of the ...— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... sideways, shouting; I dug glad heels into the squelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a stick; I hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I somehow found myself singing. The words were mere nonsense,—irresponsible babble; the tune was an improvisation, a weary, unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and yet it seemed to me a genuine utterance, and just at that moment the one thing fitting and right and perfect. Humanity would have ...— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... declamations and disquisitions to eight hundred thousand bayonets; played at making a constitution for their country, when it depended on the indulgence of the victor whether they should have a country; and were at last interrupted, in the midst of their babble about the rights of man and the sovereignty of the people, by the soldiers of ...— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... brother, You did your best or worst to keep her Duchy. Only the golden Leopard printed in it Such hold-fast claws that you perforce again Shrank into France. Tut, tut! did we convene This conference but to babble of our wives? They are plagues ...— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... Country, a babble of black spume . . . Faith, an eyeball in the sand . . . Mother, a nail through a broken hand— A kissing fume— And out of her breast the bloody bubbling ...— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke

... to live honestlye and quiettly in the court. [d] Carrye noe tales, be noe co{m}mon teller of newes, be not inquisitive of other menn's talke, for those that are desirous to heare what they need not, co{m}monly be readye to babble what they shold not. [e] Vse not to lye, for that is vnhonest; speake not everye truth, for that is vnneedfull; yea, in tyme and place a harmlesse lye is a greate deale better then a hurtfull truth. [f] Use not dyceing nor carding; the more yow use them the lesse yow wilbe esteemed; the cunninger ...— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... parlor-soldiers, graced with fancy-scars, Rehearse their bravery in imagined wars; As paupers, gathered in congenial flocks, Babble of banks, insurances, and stocks; As each if oft'nest eloquent of what He hates or covets, but possesses not; As cowards talk of pluck; misers of waste; Scoundrels of honor; country clowns of taste; Ladies of logic; ...— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... but its own, and the memory of Nick, waiting above, faded from her consciousness like a dream. Her brain felt numb and heavy still. She did not want to think. She leaned her head against a rock, closing her eyes. The continuous babble of the stream ...— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... Idiots.—Children have command at the beginning of no articulate sounds; then they learn these and syllables; after this also words of one syllable; then they speak short words of more than one syllable and sentences, but frequently babble forth words they have heard without ...— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... was a sound as if his companion had given his mouth a pat, for from pretty close at hand there was the low babble...— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... crowd, and already each class had furnished youthful adorers eager to sit at the feet of the pretty new mistress, and bring her offerings of chocolates and flowers; for five long days there was always a crowd, always a hum and babble of voices, but at the end of the week came ...— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance ...— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soul rose focussed to the effort—my body jerked itself upwards. At that moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I did utter something—my dead and shuddering tongue did babble forth some coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. On the next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat, placed there by God knows whose hands. At all events, one thing was clear—I had ...— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... within a foot of hers, and she shrinking before him, very white and mute and frightened. Her father looked on with darkling brows, and Giuliana began to gnaw her lip and look less lazy, whilst in the courtly background there was a respectful murmuring babble, supplying a sycophantic chorus to ...— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... "Do not babble so," said another of the workmen. "Some Mongol rode by and you jumped to the conclusion that he ...— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... place. But all I have to do is to shut my eyes and go there. No man loves the woods more than I—I was born within sound of the sea—down on Long Island, and I know all the songs that the seashell sings. But this babble and babel of voices pleases me better, especially since my legs went on a strike, for although I can't walk, you see I can still mix with the throng, so ...— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... and binds you for weary days and nights,—in which life hovers doubtfully, and the lips babble secrets that you cherish. It is astonishing how disease clips a man from the artificialities of the world! Lying lonely upon his bed, moaning, writhing, suffering, his soul joins on to the universe of souls by only natural bonds. The factitious ties of wealth, of place, of reputation, vanish ...— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... pause, and the rattle of the little copper-plate of the letter-box as if something had been dropped in; the babble of merry voices, ...— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... "Enough of this babble," cried the Orsini, rudely. "Tell me, old lord; just as I entered, I saw an old friend (one of your former mercenaries) quit the palace—may I crave ...— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... charged with rain, in full-blown lotuses, and in those stars that bespangle the autumnal firmament. I reside in elephants, in the cow pen, in good seats, and in lakes adorned with full-blown lotuses. I live also in such rivers as babble sweetly in their course, melodious with the music of cranes, having banks adorned with rows of diverse trees, and restored to by Brahmanas and ascetics and others crowned with success. I always reside in those rivers also that have deep ...— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... started from my eyes, when they saw me, and they called the gayest of gay greetings, though they knew that I was going only for a little while, and that many of them had set foot on British soil for the last time. The steady babble of their voices came to our ears, and they swarmed below us like ants as they disposed themselves about the decks, and made the most of the scanty space that was allowed for them. The trip was to be short, of course; ...— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... low, gurgling sound, and made up his mind to babble a few words about the caverns; but his throat was dry, and his tongue ...— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... dead. Oft have I known thee, Hogarth, weak and vain, Thyself the idol of thy awkward strain, Through the dull measure of a summer's day, In phrase most vile, prate long, long hours away, 460 Whilst friends with friends, all gaping sit, and gaze, To hear a Hogarth babble Hogarth's praise. But if athwart thee Interruption came, And mention'd with respect some ancient's name, Some ancient's name who, in the days of yore, The crown of Art with greatest honour wore, How have I seen thy coward cheek turn pale, And blank confusion seize thy ...— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... his voice rising clear and strong above the babble of Mammon, asked, in the closing chapters of ...— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... foot of a little incline before the hotel. Somewhere in the distance, off to the west, there was a prolonged blast from the whistle of a passenger engine. A dog that had been sleeping in the roadway arose and barked. The stranger began to babble and made a prophecy concerning the child that lay in ...— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... shipmates, whilst the father sat smiling placidly and obviously living over again his youthful days when he also was a sailor lad relating the same kind of stories in the same old way. The girls asked all sorts of questions, and the merry babble was kept up until Mrs Burnside reminded her husband that it was long past the usual time for prayers, and that they had better postpone the narrative until the morrow. A chapter suitable for the occasion ...— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... Such a babble of voices and questions asked, would have deafened any one not concerned in the meeting. But every one, even Sary, had a heart interest in the returned scouts, and no one took the trouble ...— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... retired to bed, the silent Soldier bubbled with humour and insisted on dancing with Anton. Evans, P.O., was imparting confidences in heavy whispers. Pat' Keohane had grown intensely Irish and desirous of political argument, whilst Clissold sat with a constant expansive smile and punctuated the babble of conversation with an occasional 'Whoop' of delight or disjointed witticism. Other bright-eyed individuals merely reached the capacity to enjoy that which under ordinary circumstances might have passed without evoking ...— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... ludicrous this conception would be to the Roman world. Tall dreams seem madness. Hamlet's feigned madness puzzles us even yet. Many an auditor heard Columbus with a smile ill-concealed behind his beard. All high ideality sounds a madman's babble. To see a true life live truly will strike many as a jest, and others as ...— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... the highest TRUTHS. The highest truth, being incomprehensible to the man of realities, as the highest man is, and largely above his level, will be a great unreality and falsehood to an unintellectual man. The profoundest doctrines of Christianity and Philosophy would be mere jargon and babble to a Potawatomie Indian. The popular explanations of the symbols of Masonry are fitting for the multitude that have swarmed into the Temples,—being fully up to the level of their capacity. Catholicism ...— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... brown one, the big brown one. I sat down on a fallen pillar and held her in my arms... Silent after the first babble was over. And after a little while the lizards came out and ran about again, as though nothing unusual was going on, as though nothing had changed... It was tremendously still there, the sun high and the shadows still; even the shadows of the weeds upon the entablature ...— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... afterwards she awakened suddenly and looked around her. A rosy glow through the trees proclaimed the dawn. The forest was wonderfully still, and there seemed no reason whatever for the sudden awakening. Then a stream of meaningless babble came through the canvas wall of the tent. She sat up instantly, and listened. Plainly, the patient was delirious, and the sound of his delirious babble must have broken through her sleep. Three minutes later she was inside the tent, her brow ...— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... leaving only a mound? That's our life, yours and mine; and Fate grudges that even these few poor hours, which make the sum of it, should be spent together. Think how long a man and woman can live side by side at best. Yet every Sunday of your life you go to church and babble about ...— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... to know her at Florence; she told them she was an orphan, the child of an English father and an Italian mother, and she charmed them as she charmed me. The first time I saw her was at an evening party. I was standing by the door talking to a friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I heard a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart. She was singing an Italian song. I was introduced to her that evening, and in three months I married Helen. Villiers, that woman, if I can call her ...— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen

... fellow has become accustomed to his new food (whether he likes it or not) or begins to babble a word or two, he is given a name that usually recalls the place where he was born, some particular event of the moment or the way he may have of making use of a word often, or of pronouncing ...— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... The babble on this announcement was tremendous. Gatty and Felix shook hands on the spot, and congratulated each other on the probable fulfilment of their secret wishes. Madame turned deadly pale, and sunk into a seat. ...— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... that Phidias' statue must borrow gold from the sun, but since that is unproved, it is absurd to talk of a deficit. Moreover, gold cannot be borrowed from the sun. Therefore what Protagoras says is mere babble, and deserves no answer. On the other hand, will Phidias answer this question? 'When you have made Athene up there on the Parthenon, ...— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... difficult to imagine the emotions with which Schiller, now at the fervid age of twenty-two, returned to his post after that intoxicating visit to Mannheim, and, his ears still tingling with the thunderous plaudits of the theater and the complimentary babble of his new friends, resumed the dosing of his sick grenadiers in Stuttgart. For a while things went on very much as before. In order to better his position in a professional way, he formed the plan of taking his doctor's degree and then qualifying for a professorship in physiology. But from ...— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... seated apart from the rest of the merry-makers, on the bank shadowed by lime-trees; the man listening with downcast eyes, the girl with mobile shifting glances now on earth, now on heaven, and talking freely; gayly,—like the babble of a happy stream, with a silvery dulcet voice and a sparkle of ...— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... scandal of the neighbourhood. Her influence in fact over the poor is a strange mixture of good and evil, of real benevolence with an interference that saps all sense of self-respect, of real sympathy and womanly feeling with a good deal of womanly meddling, curiosity, and babble. ...— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... they hurried through the village, crossed the dark bridge and approached a ramshackle house from which a babble of voices rose in strident argument. The excited chorus abated at Terry's sharp knock and the door was thrown open to disclose the belligerent figure of Tony Ricorro, the leader of the Italian colony. Recognizing the ...— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... wind blew the big wet snowflakes under the protecting glass awning into the lobby itself. The favoured playgoers minced daintily through the slush to their waiting cars, then taxis came into the procession of waiting vehicles, there was a banging of cab doors, a babble of orders to the scurrying attendants, until something like order was evolved from ...— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace

... should keep to England and Germany to Germany. My political ideal is the United States of the World, a union of states whose state boundaries are determined by what I have defined as the natural map of mankind. I cannot understand those pacifists who talk about the German right to "expansion," and babble about a return of her justly lost colonies. That seems to me not pacificism but patriotic inversion. This large disposition to hand over our fellow-creatures to a Teutonic educational system, with "frightfulness" in reserve, to "efficiency" ...— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... but he found delays And causes why he should his cabin keep, At length perforce he comes, but naught he says, Or talks like those that babble in their sleep. His shamefacedness to Godfrey plain bewrays His flight, so does his sighs and sadness deep: Whereat amazed, "What chance is this ?" quoth he. "These witchcrafts strange or ...— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... in taking D'Entrecasteaux Channel, and were, as I understood, the first of the large vessels from the other hemisphere to do so. We cast anchor off Hobart after nightfall, the many bright lights of the city gladdening our eyes, while the babble of English tongues from the boats around us reminded us once more that, after so many thousands of additional miles since at Cape Town, we were ...— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... the next letter from his father contained a revocation of all that had pleased him in the former one. Beecot senior wrote many pages of abuse—he always did babble like a complaining woman when angered. He declined to sanction the marriage and ordered his son at once—underlined—to give up all thought of making Sylvia Norman his wife. It would have been hard enough, wrote Beecot, to have received her as a ...— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... in the Gospels—just a bank-note here and there—sixty-one dollars and seventy-three cents it was." She seemed to be talking to herself rather than to the man and woman at her side. She went on—sometimes a babble they could not comprehend, as in pity and wonder they stood over her. Then again her voice rose, "He took it from the book of God. Oh, my son, my son! ...— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... Lincoln and his Aide, Halleck, went to Acquia Creek to visit Hooker, to have a peep into his plans, and, of course to babble about them. I hope Hooker will most politely ...— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... friend, Of empty babble. We cannot raise the dead. No, clearly it was fated otherwise For the tsarevich— But hearken; if you wish To do a thing, ...— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin

... and listened, but could make no sense of the confused babble about "heavy boots;" "All right, old fellow;" "Jerry's off;" and "The ink is ...— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... round At dress rehearsals, or behind the scenes, To hear the row the actor-manager Had with the author or the leading lady, Then to recount the story at the Garrick, Where, lingering lovingly on kippered lies, They babble over chestnuts and their punch And stale ...— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... Henry Rayne laughed in astonishment, "I hope you have an idea of your sex—come, stop that silly babble about men pining for a transformation, and sit you down here near me; I want to talk of something more reasonable than that. ...— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... early and emphatically introduced, is to play a great but more or less mysterious part in the romance: that is certain. Jasper, waking, makes experiments on the talk of the old woman, the Lascar and Chinaman in their sleep. He pronounces it "unintelligible," which satisfies him that his own babble, when under opium, must be unintelligible also. He is, presumably, acquainted with the languages of the eastern coast of India, and with Chinese, otherwise, how could he hope to understand the sleepers? He is being watched by the hag, ...— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang

... these Asiatic heathens, babble-mongers, and bush-ranging thieves, were not confined to England alone. King Ferdinand of Spain was the first to set the persecuting machine at work to grind them to powder, and passed an edict in the ...— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... they say, when Gratus was proconsul of Asia, a recent convert, Montanus by name—who, in his boundless desire for leadership, gave the adversary opportunity against him—first became inspired; and falling into a sort of frenzy and ecstasy raved and began to babble and utter strange sounds, prophesying in a manner contrary to the traditional and constant custom of the Church from the beginning.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} And he stirred up, besides, two women [Maximilla and Priscilla], and filled them with the false spirit, so that they talked frantically, ...— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... sounds. Then other vocal organs took up that trilling wail, and those short, sharp chuckles of eagerness. Other questioning, wondering notes mixed with the cadence. Lacking qualities identifiable as human, the disturbance was still like the babble of a group of workmen who have discovered ...— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... decline and fall? Conjecture was keen, but investigation was difficult. Father Goriot was not communicative; in the sham countess' phrase he was "a curmudgeon." Empty-headed people who babble about their own affairs because they have nothing else to occupy them, naturally conclude that if people say nothing of their doings it is because their doings will not bear being talked about; so the highly respectable merchant ...— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... repeated. The words they form should represent only material objects which can be shown him. Our unfortunate readiness to content ourselves with words that have no meaning to us whatever, begins earlier than we suppose. Even as in his swaddling-clothes the child hears his nurse's babble, he hears in class the verbiage of his teacher. It strikes me that if he were to be so brought up that he could not understand it at all, he ...— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... themselves with Greek and Latin, and in filling their heads with the indiscriminate plunder of all the old rubbish which lies scattered in books. They always seem intoxicated with their own knowledge, and for all merit are rich in importunate babble. Unskilful in everything, void of common sense, and full of absurdity and impertinence, they decry everywhere true ...— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)

... justice is.... I confess, Socrates, philosophy is a highly amusing study—in moderation, and for boys. But protracted too long, it becomes a perfect plague. Your philosopher is a complete novice in the life comme il faut.... I like very well to see a child babble and stammer; there is even a grace about it when it becomes his age. But to see a man continue the prattle of the child, is absurd. Just so with your philosophy." The consequence of this prevalent spirit of universal skepticism ...— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... life—the cabin, the dead woman, the baby face nestling at his throat, the girl coming to him with her trials and triumphs. His heart swelled so that he could not have spoken, but deep in his throat he muttered a dumb prayer. And how he suffered that day, hearing her babble mixed with moanings every time the door opened. Once the ...— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland

... agitated lady able to prick her serenity. It was when she began to babble of Kildare's will. This stipulated that in case of re-marriage, Kate and her children were to be deprived of any interest in the estate save only that provided by law, in which event Storm was to become an endowed home ...— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... along with at least a suggestion of having once walked over plowed fields and breathed country air. The second generation of city poor too often have no holiday clothes and consider their relations a "bad lot." I have heard a drunken man in a maudlin stage babble of his good country mother and imagine he was driving the cows home, and I knew that his little son who laughed loud at him would be drunk earlier in life and would have no pastoral interlude to his ravings. Hospitality still survives among foreigners, although it is buried under false pride ...— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... good old barque of England May in safety sail away: Though the tongue of fiercest Faction In its Folly may deride, Still he stands in lofty learning Like a giant o'er the tide, While the murmuring wavelets passing Far beneath his kingly hand, Looking upward, blindly babble...— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... eyes shone like rolling fireballs; their hair was moist and dishevelled. The old fortune-teller rocked to and fro in her chair, like those legless plaster figures that sway upon convex loaded bottoms. All four began to mutter incoherent sentences, and babble unintelligible wickednesses. Still the anointing of ...— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... refused to be persuaded, and Vic's voice died away to a whisper, as he continued to babble to himself of the wonders he had seen in ...— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... lecture for the cook. The motor shot up the drive into a babble and halted at the steps. Someone immense rose from a chair and leaped down the space in ...— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... apartments. He neither knew nor cared where he was. The feeling of imprisonment was no greater than he had felt on the endless, cheerless streets. He laid himself on the bench that ran along a side wall, and, closing his eyes, listened to the babble of the clear stream and the thunder of the "drive" on its journey. How the logs hurried and jostled! crushing, whirling, ducking, with the merry lads leaping about them with shouts and laughter. Suddenly he was recalled by ...— A Michigan Man - 1891 • Elia W. Peattie

... the day, one of the most remarkable is the telephone, by which we can hear each other's words at a considerable distance. By means of that instrument the sermon of the preacher, the music of the singer, the weighty words of the wise, and the silly babble of the foolish, can be carried over a great space. Have you ever thought, brethren, that if a telephone could be invented sufficiently large to convey the words uttered in one day in one of our great cities, or even in this place, what a babel of strange ...— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... was sure he had not power enough of vision to observe me in the dim reddish light of the cook-room, and this being so, he could not know I was present, more particularly as he could not hear me, yet he persisted in his poor babble, which was a behaviour in him that, more than even the matter of his speech, persuaded me ...— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... boon of the great little god Cupid ever vouchsafed you—to have the fellow you want hard and fast, and have the one you don't want come with a damp curl on his forehead and kneel to you and babble of Africa and love which, in spite of everything, shall forever bloom, an amaranth, in his heart? To know your power, and to feel the sweet security of your own happy state; to send the unlucky one, broken-hearted, to foreign climes, while you ...— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... trick or two." It was a warm night, and when the organ recital was over, John and Jane Barclay, after the custom of the town, sat on a terrace in front of the house talking of the day's events. Music always made John babble. ...— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... aridity, the hillsides covered with richer crops, and the valleys decked out with a more luxuriant and warmly coloured vegetation. Shechem lies in an actual amphitheatre of verdure, which is irrigated by countless unfailing streams; rushing brooks babble on every side, and the vapour given off by them morning and evening covers the entire landscape with a luminous haze, where the outline of each object becomes blurred, and quivers in a manner to which we are accustomed in our Western lands.* Towns grew and multiplied ...— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the whole world do knaw you be come, I'll lay; an' he'll knaw tu. Sure's death some long-tongued female will babble it to en 'fore he's off ...— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... amanuensis," said Thorny, dropping book and pencil one day, after a brief interval of silence, broken only by the whisper of the young leaves overhead and the soft babble...— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

...babble shall not henceforth trouble me. Here is a coil with protestation!—[Tears the letter.] Go, get you gone; and let the papers lie: You would be ...— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... for Monsieur Ude to sit, And prate about the mundane spit, And babble of Cook's track— He'd roast the leather off his toes, Ere he would trudge thro' polar snows, To ...— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... began to tell where he had been, what he had seen, and the many things he had done. A Frenchman must babble while he eats and drinks. A little wine makes him eloquent. He talks with his hands, shoulders, eyes. Madame Roussillon, Alice and Jean, wrapped in furs, huddled around him to hear. He was very entertaining, and they forgot the patrol until a noise startled them. It was the low of a cow. They laughed ...— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... "that long discussion, which lasted for weeks, as a period of deadly boredom,—vain disputes over words, a metaphysical jumble, and most tedious babble; the Assembly was turned into a Sorbonne lecture-room," and all this while chateaux were burning, while town-halls were being sacked, and courts dared no longer hold assize, while the distribution of wheat was stopped, and while society was in course of dissolution. In ...— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... passively, but when he offered her his arm, merely shook her head and pursed up her lips. The sun shone clearly and pleasantly; the wind was fresh and brisk upon their faces, and smelt racily of woods and meadows. As they went down into the valley of the Thyme, the babble of the stream rose into the air like a perennial laughter. On the far-away hills, sun-burst and shadow raced along the slopes and leaped from peak to peak. Earth, air and water, each seemed in better health and had more of the shrewd salt of life in them than ...— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... But a great physicist, unable to share amusement, wrote: "It is sad to see a municipality giving credence to the babble of the vulgar in a protocol, and to see authentic testimonies to an ...— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... was in the melancholy condition of those in whom the principle of animal life has unfortunately survived that of mental intelligence. He gazed a moment at me, but then seemed insensible of my presence, and went on—he, once the most courteous and well-bred—to babble unintelligible but violent reproaches against his niece and servant, because he himself had dropped a teacup in attempting to place it on a table at his elbow. His eyes caught a momentary fire from his irritation; but he struggled ...— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... novel. It's full of wit, and full of fashion, And full of taste, and full of passion; It tells some very curious histories, Elucidates some charming mysteries, And mingles sketches of society With precepts of the soundest piety. Thus I babble to the host Who adore the "Morning Post;" If they care for what I say. They ...— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various

... ZOO. Do not babble so senselessly: our chief political controversy is the most momentous in the world ...— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... in the blue eternity; it was a very triumph of glorious Night; the river ran babble-murmuring in deep soft syllables; the fountain kept rushing moonward, and blossoming momently to a great silvery flower, whose petals were forever falling like snow, but with a continuous musical clash, into the bed of its exhaustion beneath; the wind ...— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... long as he could, though he found it hard not to talk when he had so much to say. And feeling, at last, that he was in danger of choking over the babble that surged up from within him, Daddy Longlegs decided that he would go and call on Rusty Wren, who lived in the cherry tree near Farmer ...— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... the necks and shoulders of all flesh. The small enchanter nothing can withstand, no seniority of age, no gravity of character; uncles, aunts, grandsires, grandams, fall an easy prey: he conforms to nobody, all conform to him; all caper and make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls ...— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... not know and cannot utter," said Sir Walter, "a note of music; and complicated harmony seems to me a babble of confused, though pleasing sounds; yet simple melodies, especially if connected with words and ideas, have as much effect on me as on most people. I cannot bear a voice that has no more life in it than a pianoforte or bugle-horn. There is in almost all ...— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... nerves were overstrung. This ceaseless iteration of hell and murder, murder and hell would drive him crazy, he thought. He wished mightily that the priest would have done and name his price and go. What was the sense and purpose of this endless babble about hell and murder?{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} A sickening thought struck him like a blow, leaving him weak. What if old Archulera had ...— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... night, when the holy stars were shining, ah, how softly the little brook murmured to them! you could almost fancy it did not babble so loudly as in the day-time, for fear lest it should wake the sleeping ...— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer

... over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on ...— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes